Martha Bayne, Writer/Editor

I am a writer and editor based in Chicago, and a senior editor with Cleveland-based Belt Publishing, producing independent books and journalism for the Rust Belt. Rust Belt Chicago, an anthology of essays, poetry, and short fiction which I edited, was published by Belt in August 2017. My features and essays have also appeared in Buzzfeed, the Chicago Reader, Crain’s Chicago Business, the Chicago Tribune, the Rumpus, the Baffler, and Latterly magazine, among other outlets. For the spring of 2017 I was also a team leader with City Bureau, reporting on the West Side of Chicago, and I’m currently on staff part-time with the Medill School of Journalism’s Social Justice News Nexus program.

I am also a member of Theater Oobleck’s artistic ensemble, with whom I have worked on a wide range of projects. Most recently Oobleck produced A Memory Palace of Fear, an immersive theater project qua haunted house I developed with visual artist Andrea Jablonski, in October 2017.